Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Not promising
From the ScienceDirect abstract of a "social" "science" "study":
6185 students from 35 countries were asked, “What contribution do you think the country you are living in has made to world history?” They provided an estimate from 0 to 100%, where 0% indicated that the country made no contribution to world history and 100% indicated that all contributions came from the country. U.S. students provided an estimate of 30%, quite high in some regards, but modest compared to other countries (e.g., 39% by Malaysians). Country-level estimates varied widely, ranging from 11% (Switzerland) to 61% (Russia). The total estimate (summing for all countries) was 1156%.Summing up percentages. Well, that's an Innovative Disruptive way of using numbers, but it's TOTALLY MEANINGLESS. Basic 6th-grade math tells you not to do this. Dividing 1156 by 35 countries gives a mean of 33%. The mean would be the expected number here, but the median is VASTLY superior to the mean in all situations. The full article is paywalled, so I can't tell if it gets any better. Judging by this weirdly stupid abstract, I doubt it. A more useful analysis would account for the lifetime of countries. Switzerland is 800 years old in its current form, so its contribution to history OUGHT to be larger than Malaysia, founded in current form in 1963.
Labels: Blinded by Stats
¶ 11:28 PM
